In 1975 I was a fledgling PR in the music industry and I remember well many of the events captured so magnificently in Dylan Jones’s latest chronicle of pop history. We always think of 1977 as the year of seismic change in music, but this book demonstrates that we may need to re-evaluate things and go back a couple of years.
In 1975, the Sex Pistols were just beginning their career and had not yet sprung into national consciousness and notoriety. The punks weren’t quite as binary in their music tastes as the history books would suggest. John Lydon was a big Hawkland fan and auditioned for the Sex Pistols singing Alice Cooper. The Stranglers had an ear for The Doors, and Mick Jones of the Clash later popped up at an ABBA concert. As much as anything punk was an attitude rather than a musical genre.
